As part of the Business Boomers series on the BBC, they have produced an engaging overview of Amazon, how it came about, some critique of how it is damaging businesses and insight into its own business culture.
You can check it out on the BBC iPlayer (for about five more days and if you’re in the UK). You can find the programme here.
So what do we learn? Quite a lot. I was struck by three things. Firstly, scale. Amazon is truly huge and it’s well worth being reminded of that. Brits spent 70 quid per capita last year on Amazon. That’s billions.
Secondly, Jeff Bezos is an interesting character and notable in being both founder and still CEO. His notion of Customer Obsession is fascinating and clearly at the core of what they do.
And finally, there is still opportunity to get a slice of the action. The show includes some interesting profiles of third party sellers who are plugging in to the Amazon phenomena.
It’s well worth a watch. Did you see it?
3 Responses
The documentary does show the core concept behind Amazon. Amazon is 100% customer centric company and it’s not surprising how it excelled in past few years.
I’ve lately heard more and more marketplace sellers comment saying “they have done better with Amazon but I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket”.
Currently about 80% through ‘The Everything Store’ by Brad Stone and it provides a bit of a more in-depth insight into the story. The BBC documentary was definitely good though and gave some insight into other areas like 3rd party sellers etc.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Everything-Store-Brad-Stone/dp/0593070461
What an inspirational – once in a lifetime individual Jeff is. I found this a most interesting documentary. The core principles he started with still carry through to this day.